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Business education and training developer amaRocks Group has announced the company’s first feature-packed Android 2.2 powered mobile learning tablet, the MLearnPad, which is is available now through amaRocks’ business education partners.

MLearnPad’s compact design encompasses a vibrant 8″ color LCD touch screen, with a 4GB of internal storage, and up to 32GB of expandable storage via micro SD, a powerful Freescale ARM Cortex – A8 processor, and 512 MB of RAM.  Boasting a feature set unparalleled in its class, MLearnPad comes standard with blazing fast Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 1.3MP webcam, and USB.

MLearnPad which was recently approved by US FCC comes with Android 2.2, which means it has support for Adobe Flash Player, giving the course participants unbridled access to the learning content.  The multi-tasking MLearnPad also comes with eReader, e-mail, Skype, MSN, YAHOO! Messenger, Facebook, Office Suite, 3D games support, Built-in Monophonic Recording and many more.

The introduction of the MLearnPad was integrated and tested with more than 300 Soft Skills and Enterprise Business Skills courses represents a hugely innovative step forward in the evolution of the online training industry. It has quite literally made it possible to take an entire curriculum, classroom, support staff, library and access it anywhere, anytime, in a totally user friendly format that is no bigger than an ordinary text book, and is available absolutely free of charge when course participant enroll for Professional or Pro-Diploma certificate course or at discounted price when they buy a single course(s).

In today’s fast paced environment, much of business learner’s time is lost sitting on commuter trains and buses, waiting in line, sitting in waiting rooms and “killing” time between meetings and in coffee shops.  The MLearnPad makes it possible for business learners to invest all this down time in their future.  In fact, anywhere business learners have access to WIFI can now be their own office, private classroom, library or study hall.

MLearnPad will keep business learners connected and engaged whether they are at home, at office, in flight, or at the neighborhood coffee shop.  Surf the web, download apps, and check email, stream videos and music, or share online status with friends and family, anywhere, Anytime, and at their own pace.

Imagine being able to participate in LIVEeCLASS while ride the train to the office, review lessons while waiting at doctor’s office, write an assignment in the coffee shop, between meetings access webinar tutorials, while enjoy lunch at the food court review essay with course facilitator.

If business learners have access to WIFI, they literally have access to an entire world of training opportunities and support services through this revolutionary tool.

The call for submissions to present lectures, roundtables and panel sessions at the 2012 Game Developers Conference® (GDC) is now open through Tuesday, September 6^th. Organized by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, GDC 2012 is the game industry’s most comprehensive and longest running professionals-only event where game developers converge for a week of learning, networking and inspiration. GDC 2012 will take place March 5-9 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Session proposals can be submitted via the official GDC website.

The GDC 2012 advisory board welcomes a slate of new members primarily aiding in the content planning for the Business, Marketing & Management, Production, and Visual Arts tracks including:

Chris Charla, Portfolio Director for XBLA, Microsoft Game Studios
Prior to joining Microsoft, Charla served as VP of business development at Foundation 9 Entertainment as well as editor-in-chief of Next Generation Magazine and launch editor of IGN.com.  In his new role at Microsoft Game Studios, Charla helps to shape Microsoft’s first party digital games portfolio.

Rod Fergusson, Executive Producer, Epic Games
As executive producer for Epic Games’ blockbuster Gears of War franchise,
Fergusson led the production of Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) and the 2006 Game of the Year, Gears of War (Xbox 360, PC), in addition to collaborating with creative talent on the Gears of War novels, comic books and film. During his 10 year tenure at Microsoft, Fergusson also produced a number of game projects including Train Simulator, Blood Wake and Counter-Strike (Xbox).

Lee Petty, Project Lead & Art Director, Double Fine Productions
Since 1996, Petty has worked in the game industry in a wide variety of art production and leadership roles.  Petty has shipped numerous console and PC titles at companies such as Accolade, Infogrames, and Crystal Dynamics. Petty is currently at Double Fine Productions, where he serves as art director and project lead; his work includes 2009’s Brutal Legend and 2011’s Stacking.

Justin Thavirat , Senior Art Director, Blizzard
Thavirat is a senior art director at Blizzard Entertainment and has been working in the video game industry since 1994. He has contributed game art, concept art, cinematics art and marketing illustrations for many of Blizzard’s games in the Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft series. Most recently, Thavirat served as lead artist on World of Warcraft, art director on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and is currently art directing Blizzard’s unannounced massively multiplayer online game.

Ru Weerasuriya, Art and Creative Director and Co-Founder, Ready at Dawn Studios
Weerasuriya is the art and creative director and co-founder of Ready at Dawn Studios. 2006 saw the release of their first game, Daxter, to critical and commercial acclaim, earning them a nomination for the BAFTA awards. Formerly a senior artist with Blizzard Entertainment, Weerasuriya initially worked on Starcraft: Brood War and then contributed to the blockbuster Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Weerasuriya’s work has been published in several books and magazines, including The Art of Warcraft, The Art of World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons books and Monster Manuals.

“The GDC Advisory Board has made improving the quality of presented talks its number one goal,” said Meggan Scavio, GM, Game Developers Conference Events. “With our new board members and the introduction of a new submissions system, we are able to continue to present talks that are representative of interesting and current work happening in game development each year.”

Absolute® Software Corporation has announced the general availability of Absolute Manage 5.4.2, allowing for customer upgrades to Apple’s newest operating system without any interruption to the endpoint management processes they depend on to effectively manage their cross-platform deployments. In addition, Apple Open Directory integration means organizations can now better manage users’ access to resources used on iOS 4 devices.

“Absolute Manage is truly cross-platform and provides endpoint management capabilities for PC, Mac®, and iOS devices,” said John Livingston, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Absolute Software. “Our customers expect us to keep pace with the market and we do, ensuring our solutions support the most current operating systems and form factors on the market today.”

Absolute Manage allows organizations to efficiently manage all their assets by automating time-consuming IT processes such as software distribution, patch management, asset inventory and imaging. Additionally, it helps organizations save money by allowing them to track installed applications and licenses, redeploy under-used licenses and hardware to optimize inventory, and avoid non-compliance fines.

Quebec’s OroLogic Inc. has released the latest version of their time tracking software for customers world-wide. The main focus of OroTimesheet 7 is performance improvements, ease-of-use and the addition of important new features. This release shows OroLogic’s attention to customer feedback as it incorporates many features requested by current users.

“Ever since the beginning, we have taken strides to always improve the quality of our software,” said Guylain Plante, president of OroLogic Inc. “We did it again with this new version by including highly requested features such as exporting invoices to QuickBooks and Simply Accounting.”

via newsletter: The Digital Media and Wireless Association of British Columbia’s ( DigiBC) core focus is to help build a strong – globally competitive — digital media and wireless community. DigiBC has several members that are leading companies in the animation, special effects, video games, social and wireless industries. We currently have a number of initiatives underway to improve our value to all our members and sponsors in this community.

One of those initiatives include the launch of a brand new dynamic and interactive website powered by Vancouver-based SilkStart Technology Inc. This new website leverages the latest social networking technology to engage and empower our members.

Say goodbye to the old static website and say hello to a new website that will empower our members to engage and improve their connections in the digital media and wireless community. DigiBC members can now easily update their company profile for the membership directory, post relevant news and lead relevant discussions to engage the community. Other new features include:

• Members will be able to follow each other and get the latest updates on events, discussions, profiles, product updates and more. As a member you will have access to the membership directory, company profiles, events calendar, shared links, discussions, videos and documents
• Members can post their events under the discussions Community
• Integrated connections for member to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
• Dedicated space for digital media and wireless subgroups that will be able to create their own space to share within their community
• Member access to specialized industry reports
• Job board for members to post employment opportunities

In addition to the new website, DigiBC member benefits such as extended health, dental and life plan will soon be added.

Raindance Canada presents an intensive weekend workshop designed to give young filmmakers hands-on experience in screenwriting, producing & directing a short film. Participants in the Weekend Film Workshop For Teens will form film teams and get hands-on experience shooting a film as they take on the key creative roles in film production. A short film will be produced by each team by the end of the weekend, then screened in a mini-festival the following week.

This course is designed for aspiring young filmmakers age 14 and up interested in making films and knowing what it takes to create a viable filmmaking career. The Workshop will be held on August 13th and 14th  at the Centre for Social Innovation – Annex on Bathurst in Toronto. The cost for this workshop is $349.00 (+ tax) for non-members, or $319.00 (+ tax) for Raindance Canada members. Announced mentors for this workshop include James Cooper, Yaw Attuah, Charles M. Scott and Brian Smith.

Day One of the workshop will feature a  Hands-on Shoot Pre-production session, where participants will undertake the following:

• Writing: Participants complete a short film script using essential story structure.
• Directing: Participants practice shot composition and learn about directing style, storyboards, working with actors & shoot to edit.
• Producing: Participants prepare a script breakdown, budget & negotiate fees, crew and production requirements.

On Day Two, the groups will move on to a day of production in  Let’s Make a Movie, where, under the mentorship of industry experts, participants work with actors and a camera operator to direct a short script and bring the film in on time and on budget. By the end of the weekend, each team will have completed pre-production and production of a short film.

For students interested in documentary filmmaking, there is an opportunity to join the documentary team under the mentorship of award-winning filmmaker Chuck Scott to create a documentary project covering this creative weekend.

Participants in this weekend intensive workshop will receive mentoring from industry professionals on the art, business and discipline of a working filmmaker’s life and receive valuable insider advice on starting a viable career in filmmaking in Canada. Participants could also win a chance to be part of the crew to film Raindance Canada’s next Trailer.

After the weekend workshop, there will be a screening of all the completed short films. Each team’s film will be edited by a Film Editor and the completed films will play at an invitation-only screening party at Raindance Toronto. Parents and friends are welcome to attend this red carpet event and celebrate the work of these young filmmakers.

Cambridge based software company iVenuto has launched its first business app for the Apple iPad platform. Sign In, the reception desk visitor registry app is now available on iTunes App store for the introductory price of $24.99 (regular price $28.99). This innovative app is the first of its kind, allowing users to convert their iPad device into an easy-to-use Visitor registry.

Most offices require all visitors or contractors to “sign in,” satisfying the needs of health and safety concerns providing an accurate head count in the event of an emergency. The head count is given to emergency officials when asked if everyone is present and accounted for during a fire evacuation, for example.

The problem is: most visitor registries are paper binders with a collection of illegible scribblings, purposely so to keep competitors unaware of appointments or to hide personal information when asked for an email or license plate by the host company.

The “Sign In” app addresses this problem by keeping all information private. Visitors enter their own information on a graphical interface that mimics a paper page in a book. Visitors can not see the information on previous visitors.

Data collected on each visitor is unique to each company’s policy. The data is then easily accessible to only administrative staff. A custom report writing tool allows users to quickly create instant reports. The software also has a badge printing feature – creating personalized & dated color badges for each visitor (according to the software’s FAQ, this is done via AirPrint). The software also assigns a Sign In and Sign Out time stamp, managing a dynamic “on-premises” report.

Toronto’s emailtopia has announced the much-anticipated release of Response Manager 5.5, a product designed to help organizations manage their customer service email inboxes.

“We are very proud of the work completed by our development team that has allowed us to begin shipping Response Manager 5.5”, said emailtopia President and CEO Mike Senechal. “With the latest version of Response Manager we are ensuring that our product adapts to the latest changes in the marketplace, and continues to offer an affordable email management solution to both SMBs and large organizations.”

* JavaScript custom actions offers the ability to put in place dynamic business rules to satisfy very specific needs, such as updating information in other enterprise systems such as CRM. For instance, if a client emails an organization’s customer service team asking for a price quote, a custom business rule could be used to automatically update the organization’s CRM system with an instruction for the account manager to send the client a price quote.

* More flexible user scheduling. A new user scheduling option for Response Manager lets each user have two “working” time spans per day, which makes it easy to avoid assigning messages to users during break periods.

* Closed message reporting. A new Response Manager report is now available which assesses user performance based on the number of messages closed within the defined service level, as well as providing average close time values.

* SQL 2008 support

* Outlook 2010 support. Outlook 2010 is supported on any operating system, including Windows 7 (32- & 64-bit).

* Secure IMAP connection support.

* Pure JDBC database connections. Response Manager no longer requires additional SQL Server client software or an ODBC data source.

The Internet Marketing Conference is coming to the Renaissance Vancouver Harbourside Hotel on October 3rd and 4th (Monday and Tuesday). This conference features an experienced roster of speakers who will present their thoughts on the many challenges faced by today’s moderner marketer, with a focus on the following:

• Are the web marketing lessons of the past 10 years still relevant?
• Do we still need to be “site” focused?
• What is our Cross-Platform Content Strategy?
• Who should manage our social media initiatives? Is it replacing PR?
• Should social commerce be managed separately from social media?
• Should we spend more on campaigns, technology or people?
• Is now the time to test mobile? What does a mobile strategy look like?
• Should we invest in an app or mobile site? What kind of results should we expect?
• How do we win the budget for more advanced digital marketing programs?

The digital eco-system has expanded across multiple platforms through multiple devices putting pressure on marketers to not only manage multiple touch points, but make sense of new behavior, sentiment and intent. At IMC Vancouver you will have the chance to explore, discuss and debate today’s challenges, opportunities and solutions in four different tracks:

Content, Community, Campaigns and Insights:

• Content Strategy: Email, Video, Website Content, SEO
• Community Strategy: Social Media Management and Participation
• Campaigns: Paid Search, Display, Social and Mobile
• Insights: Voice of Customer, Analytics and User Experience

Why You Should Attend:

• Take home practical, tactical advice you can apply immediately
• Get up to speed on marketing technology without becoming an engineer
• Improve your ability to manage multiple campaigns across multiple platforms
• Learn how to get insights out of data without becoming a statistician
• Align online marketing with overall business goals

Double Early Bird pricing for this conference is available until July 30th, with Regular Early Bird prices available until September 9th, when Regular prices come into effect.

Pixel to Product has launched its final wave for the Canadian Digital Marketing Outlook for 2011. This portion of the Pixel to Product research wave is an introspective look at how brands are using social media, mobile and email marketing. Through this research, Pixel to Product aims to understand how organizations are using social media, mobile and email marketing to promote their products and services, engage their customers and drive brand awareness.

I fully concur with Justin Kozuch, Pixel to Product’s Lead Researcher, who stated that “too often, we’ve been forced to rely on US numbers to make informed decisions for our Canadian clients or rely on outdated, expensive and inaccessible data to help us better understand the trends in social media.”

The company’s goal is to survey 1000 of the world’s biggest brands. They are aiming to better understand how Starbucks is using mobile to engage and inform their customers, and Pixel to Product is interested in better understanding how Dell is using social media to provide customer support over Twitter.

While this survey is focused primarily on Canadian companies, Pixel to Product is also interested in gathering data from American and international companies. To make this process as easy as possible, they’ve written copy to support that communication. If you’d like to use this copy in your communications, don’t hesitate to send Justin an email and he’ll be happy to provide it to you.

Finally, if you’re responsible for your organizations digital marketing efforts and a have deep understanding of how your organization uses social media, mobile platforms and email marketing, please take a few moments to complete the survey.

As with the recently issued report on the Canadian digital media economy, Pixel to Product will be making the report available free of charge. This report will be made available for download from their website in Q4 2011. In addition to the final report, Pixel to Product will be releasing the raw, anonymized data sets in a variety of open data formats. For an example of what the final report will look like, take a look at their report on the Canadian digital media economy.